Plot seed idea for a Superhero setting

[dvandom]

Just read in The Week about a growing problem in African nations with lax environmental laws: they're being paid to act as dumping grounds for discarded computers and other electronic devices.

What if these piles of rotting circuitry were to form an emergent consciousness? Especially if some unrecognized supervillain-enhanced equipment was part of the mix?

Comments

[razorsmile.livejournal.com]

And the first to communicate with it is a bright young Tutsi boy, in an attempt to build a cardboard cell-phone ...

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Funny, that was actually one of the plot seeds for my Futility Station project. Which I really need to get around to rendering more fully.... (http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=91618)

[z4nd4r.livejournal.com]

Techno-Africa?

[tvsgrady.livejournal.com]

Skynet! O NOES!

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

Even more of a good reason for Lex Luthor to setup shop in Africa: raw materials for nano-assemblers.

The really kick ass (not really, but bear with me here) thing about the dumping is that a lot of those phones still work. People just upgrade to a new phone, throws theirs out, and it ends up in a dump. Working cellphones + emerging OLPC mesh networks + Nigerian email scams = an emergent proto-singularity culture.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Oh, on the topic of the Nigerian scams, I got around to listening to the Superman radio dramas that came with Target's version of the Superman Returns deluxe set. One of them centers on the pre-email version of that scam. It's titled "The Ten Thousand Dollar Ghost".

[bluelang.livejournal.com]

It is not nice to leave such ideas where I can find them before my morning coffee....

Neo-Africa - Home to Cybernetic Warloads bent on world domination.